And Stratos was utterly lost. He did not care as long as Alession fucked him to completion.
Moaning, wild with need, he pumped his cock into Alession’s hand even as he ground back to be taken deeper. He whimpered and cried out beneath Alession’s plowing, Alession’s grunts becoming more urgent now, his thrusts shorter, his breath shallower.
Stratos squeezed him, sucking him deeper into his hole.
Shouting, Alession rooted him, fierce, deep, his fingers digging into Stratos’s hips as he dragged the quaestor back, impaling him on his cock. And then, shuddering, Alession came so hard Stratos swore he would taste it, the man pounding jet after jet of molten cum into his ass. He cried out, thrust once more, and pulled out.
Glancing back, Stratos saw the consul was holding his cock, holding back. Surely he did not need to come again. So soon? But Alession was stroking himself with one hand, the other gripping the base of his shaft. Drawn by the lascivious sight, Stratos turned fully around, licking his lips, begging with his gaze for a taste.
A look of desperation on his face, Alession grabbed Stratos’s by the nape and drew him in.
Bending on chafed knees, Stratos came willingly, opening for his lover’s cock. In one heady swallow, he took Alession down with pleasure. With a cry Alession slid into that wet hole, pushing deep into the clasp of Stratos’s throat. Grabbing his head, he fucked him mercilessly, cum and saliva drooling down Stratos’s jaw, over his chest.
Alession’s face was strained with his crisis, but still he smirked, fucking Stratos for the pleasure of his Empress.
“My love.” He was looking at her. Looking at
her
even as he pumped Stratos’s mouth.
The Empress remained motionless, unaffected, unmoved.
Anger suffused Stratos, and he tried to pull away, but Alession kept him there, held him, used him, and Stratos loved every inch of it. Shame burned his cheeks as he reveled in being used. Alession’s free hand closed over Stratos’s shaft.
In three strokes, Stratos came, spurting his seed impotently onto the floor.
“Take it, bitch-boy!” With a heaving grunt, Alession came again, choking Stratos with his spunk and the heavy, thick rod of his cock.
Stratos swallowed it like the whore he was. He would take this if it was all Alession could give.
“My love.”
Those words should have been for him.
Some day.
Stratos swore it like a dark spell.
Some day, when she is dead, he will say it to me.
And as Alession pulled out completely, leaving Stratos empty, hollow and bereft, cum trickling from his mouth, from his ass, both holes thoroughly used, his body thoroughly sated, Stratos slumped to the marble floor.
For now, this…this fucking would be enough.
The Empress’s lips quirked every so slightly into a smile.
Chapter Eleven
HAIL THE VICTORIOUS DEAD
There were many Spectacles to be had
In the Empress’s Grand Theatre.
But a favorite among the masses was
The Gauntlet of Fire
—Nefertari Amon Ankh, House Actaeon, the Warriors
Lucan’s steps were heavy as he exited the Claim. Remulon had been more than happy to plow Lucan’s vanquished foe and keep his silence, and for surprisingly few triens. Perhaps after years of being hailed a champion in the arena, the man had grown bored with his assignment as Master of the Claim.
Yes, Lady Luck Viltheleon had smiled on Lucan, at least where his Claim was concerned.
Now he trudged toward the training grounds of Ludus Magnii. Already, he could hear the shouts and excited battle cries of novices training, drilling, sparring. He hoped he could smooth the frown from his face before he saw Hektor. He could not help it.
The Gauntlet of Fire. How had he drawn that as his next challenge in the arena?
The odds-makers. Had they turned against him? Such a thing was not unheard of. Rumor told of Daios, a primus palus from House Menelaus who had accidentally shot an odds-maker with an arrow. The shaft—a strange and grotesque invention of his house’s masters—caused an infection that cost the odds-maker his leg. After that, Daios never drew a fair fight. Two on one, four on one, animals being released, his opponent with cover, superior weapons…
For six months, he staved off all the odds-maker’s scenarios, winning or gaining the Mercy each time.
Until the final time, when his luck ran out.
The plebes had turned on him. As the children’s rhyme went, “When the Empress lifts her palm up to the sky, it means let your swords fly!” His victor had cut his head off and paraded it around to the delight of both plebes and citizens alike.
Lucan had only been ten, a slave in the House of Pineus then, but that sight had stayed with him to this day—Daios’s face confused, as if his head wondered where the rest of his body was.
Even still, despite the ignominy of death, despite the brutality, the glory of the arena drew Lucan. Even at ten, he had wanted fiercely to be a gladiator. Better to fight and die than to be a slave on his knees. Better to plow than be plowed.
Lucan wondered if he still felt the same as that ten-year-old boy. He lengthened his stride. The sun glinted off the top of the pillars around the gladiatorial school, the Doomsayer’s statue looming over him, reminding him of his own mortality.
Maybe Hektor will kill me, and I won’t have to worry about the Gauntlet of Fire.
He was late, and Hektor would be furious. These past few weeks, the primus palus had worked Lucan in a grueling schedule—up before dawn, training hard at drills, running, endurance, strength, pulling huge loads through the sand while Hektor sat on the back looking disapproving, always disapproving.
Hektor never gave praise any longer, never a kind word or a smile. And then, in the evening, he would stalk into Lucan’s chambers, and they would fuck. Hektor would plow him from behind, Lucan’s face deep in the pillow, his ass in the air so Hektor could use him as he saw fit.
Truth be told, Lucan adored the plowing. He loved his ass ridden hard and used, loved the feel of Hektor’s thick cock stretching him and the feel of his hot seed pouring into his hole. And sometimes, afterward, Hektor would cradle Lucan and hold him in the dark of night. He would kiss Lucan’s nape and brush his golden hair, and whisper soft things, things Lucan could not make out. He never asked what they were.
A part of him didn’t want to know what ghosts Hektor Actaeon whispered into his hair.
Lucan shook off those thoughts—the memory of Hektor’s hands on him, his dick in Lucan’s ass, teeth on Lucan’s nape—as he climbed the stairs to the school. The sound of weapons clashing was loud in the morning air, and on the wind came the shouts and cheers from the theatre as the bestiarii fought their beasts and whipped the crowds into an early frenzy.
Shivers spiked down Lucan’s spine at the sight of Hektor.
All his gear was laid out, sparkling and shining, and Lucan took back all the uncharitable things he had been thinking about the primus palus. Sure, they had trained hard, but without that training, Lucan might have received nothing more in the arena than a swift death. He had seen even veterans fall to exhaustion, to an unfortunate stumble or an unlucky injury.
He had no illusions that the Empress’s Theatre was fair.
“Come,” Hektor said in his gruff voice, and he gestured to Lucan’s piecemeal armor. It was customary for the mentors to dress their charges. More than once, the armories of the Ludus Magnii had been filled with the sounds of mentors and students losing control as fingers skimmed over hard pectorals and rippling abs, over corded biceps, and inevitably found their way to cock and balls and fucking, rutting in the cool shadowy corners of the school.
Mentors often took their novices right before a fight, for it was Arenian belief that the stronger man’s seed would give strength to the lesser man. It was not uncommon for a novice to go out onto the field of battle with his mentor’s seed still drying on his thighs. This practice was what instigated the Victor’s Claim. It was not only the strong taking the weak. It was the strong empowering those weaker so that they might battle harder, fiercer. So that they might survive.
For a moment Lucan gazed at Hektor, hoping for a quick plow, a fuck bent over the racks. Hoping the man might want him.
But Hektor was more superstitious than religious. He did not believe in a release before battle. It made one dull, he always said. Best to keep sharp, in fighting form, and then to gain release in the Claim below.
Lucan’s cock stirred, but it wanted no other man besides Hektor.
He shivered as Hektor’s fingers skimmed his biceps, as he set the padding in place and then slid Lucan’s grandguard over his arm and lashed it in place. He bent and secured the padding to Lucan’s right leg, the one he would put forward when he cast his net.
“They chose this for you,” Hektor was saying quietly, his voice gruff as he pulled tight on the padding. “The odds-makers chose the Gauntlet of Fire to see your mettle.”
Lucan licked his lips.
Gauntlet of Fire.
It sounded hot and sexy on Hektor’s lips. And then came a flash of his man bent over a chariot, legs spread wide, his ass exposed, and Lucan pushing into it. He didn’t like topping, but for Hektor, he would. He wanted to be hard inside his man, filling Hektor’s ass, pumping until he came deep inside, until his cum stained Hektor’s thighs.
Unused to such possessive feelings, Lucan swallowed hard. His hand felt numb on his trident as he picked it up. He glanced back at Hektor and could not help but want him. In that instance, he saw Hektor wanted him too.
Lucan leaned in, but suspicion proved too strong.
Hektor turned his head. “Come now. We’ll be late.”
Blushing, Lucan went. He tried not to look at Hektor as they made the long march from House Vulpinius, down the spiraling stairwells and toward the deep bowl in the center of the Grand Palestra. The Empress’s Theatre. Already, the shouts and screams were rising.
The Spectacles were becoming more visceral and bloody the closer they came to the Grand Melee. Elaborate sets, complex narrations, increased handicaps, pitfalls built into the arena itself.
Just last week, the Empress had ordered all the cripples rounded up and sewn into fantastical costumes—mermaids, centaurs, fairies. Then they were released into the theatre, clubbed and cudgeled to death by the bestiarii.
The masses had loved it.
Tumult and cheering, smattered applause and insults thrown and then hurled back, swelled up from the amphitheatre. The clashing of weaponry rang out, two shouts from two different gladiators—one of triumph and one of despair.
And then the thundering rumble as the crowd came to its feet. “To the sky! To the sky!”
Despite the sweltering heat, Lucan suppressed a shiver. The day did not favor the loser.
The hush came, and he pictured clearly the Empress standing, coming to the edge of her balcony, her handmaidens pulling back the filmy curtains. Beautiful and blind, clad all in white, her skin as fair as her raiment, her chestnut-brown hair flowing in a breeze that touched only her.
Empress and executioner.
The roar swelled again, and the sound of the iron horns signified the death of a warrior.
Sudden shudders racked Lucan, and for a moment, he felt he would not be able to stop shaking. And then Hektor’s hand fell gently to his shoulder. Lucan drank in the warm strength of the man and took a deep breath. Hektor’s touch brought a modicum of sanity back, but Lucan did not dare touch him in return.
He might never stop if he did. And Hektor Actaeon belonged to no man.
The primus palus paused at the iron arch where mentors split from their students. Ahead, the vomitoria beckoned, its dark mouth seeming to pulse with malice.
Hektor turned Lucan to face him. His sky-blue eyes were steadfast. “They chose this for you, Lucan. You can win it.”
Wordlessly, Lucan nodded, and before his face could betray him, he turned and forced himself into a swift jog. He would not look back. He felt Hektor’s gaze on him.
Lucan’s heart swelled. He would return to Hektor. Gauntlet of Fire. He would make it through and return to his man. His love. He raced to the end, raced from that thought, from the implications of it, from Hektor, to the barrier, and was surprised to see it already raising up, the sunlight flooding the dark tunnel.
The Gates of Death pulled wide.
The narrator raised his hands for silence, and the crowd hushed. This was a rare treat, for narrators were only employed for the grandest of Spectacles. “There he was, deep in enemy territory, in the Valley of Catarrh, surrounded by foul Morgeddons, with no way out. One man armed with only trident and net. I give you, fair people of Arena, the Gauntlet of Fire!”
The vomitoria shook as the masses stomped their feet in time to the great, swelling strains of the water organ. The iron horns blared, sounding the beginning of the Spectacle.
Lucan’s greatest yet.
“Your chance, Lucan. Your chance.”
He remembered Hektor’s words, but mostly he remembered the look in Hektor’s eyes—proud, certain, filled with love. Cerulean blue as the clearest day. Emotion burgeoned in Lucan’s heart.
And then he was out in the blaze of day. Heat blasted him the moment he stepped out into the sand, and the brightness had him blinking rapidly, the scene before him a blur of shimmering heat and red-orange flares.
Lucan blinked hard.
I must not falter.
The scene before him cleared. Now he saw it—barricades had been erected in the center of the theatre, a labyrinth of timber walls and supports. And all of it burning.
Gauntlet of Fire, indeed.
“Lucan! Lucan! Lucan!” Half the crowd was cheering for him, the others screaming for his death. Amid the thunder came a strange hissing.
Hektor’s voice broke through the tumult. “Get moving!”
An arrow hissed into the sand at Lucan’s feet. He danced back, casting wildly about.
There!
Four archers, one at each corner of the labyrinth, each drawing down on him.
As one, they loosed.
Panic jolting him, Lucan bolted toward the labyrinth. At least within the walls he would have some cover. Arrows hissed into the sand behind him. He ran, pumping his legs and arms, his net bouncing on his back, his grip on his trident slippery. A second volley chased after him, cutting up the sand to the delighted shrieks of the masses.